Competing with Japanese Suppliers

Abstract

In the next decade, Japanese companies will be increasingly influential in many sectors of the computer market. It is therefore important to understand the general behaviour of Japanese electronic companies, and the implications of their behaviour for Western computer suppliers. This chapter considers how product design, production, marketing, service, administration and general management are combined by some Japanese companies into a strategy which some Western companies find difficult to deal with.

This chapter is a revised and condensed version of a paper by Merlin Stone that appeared in the Journal of Long Range Planning, April, 1984.